Conversation

There’s a whole field of anti-explainer study in my corner of the blogosphere 🤣 I don’t unreservedly dislike them since there is a minority of good ones, but overall it’s a grifty part of blogo-newslettero-podcasto-sphere just a notch above Taboola-grade click farming
2
4
I am somewhat sympathetic to both POVs here since I started to straddle both spaces (so you can argue I have no cred to critique either!). I have definitely had editors in popular press edit out all references to theory, even accessible “pop theory”, in writing I submit.
6
I assume whenever I write something that touches on an academic discipline I’m not part of, 20 very angry people will find me on twitter to tell me why I am completely wrong/outdated ab their field. :) It is a good opportunity to learn but, I get their frustration.
5
It’s also home to the most hostile practitioner-theorist divide on normative questions after political science. Ezra Klein doing a media theory op-ed is like Putin doing an op-ed on governance. It’s not that he lacks expertise. It’s that he’s the natural object of theorizing.
1
2
I’d take him seriously if he adopted a meta-ironic posture like Ryan Holliday (“Trust me, I’m lying”) that deconstructs his own role in shaping the media landscape in the process of theorizing it.
1
3